Just because you could, would you want to?

Written by Robert McCaffrey Editorial Director, Global Cement Magazine

04 December 2017

Apart from being born female, and living in the developed world, the most obvious factor in living a long life is your diet. In fact, there is an old saying that ‘Most men dig their own graves with their teeth.’ Staying away from trans-fats, processed foods and high levels of sugar and salt have all been shown to increase health outcomes. Laying off the booze is obviously a good idea, since alcohol is a proven carcinogen, although various studies suggest that alcohol in moderation may be good for your heart - especially if the alcohol comes in the form of red wine, rich in anti-oxidant resveratrols. Drinking up to a half a glass of red each day has been shown to increase longevity by up to five years (compared to only 2.5 extra years for those indulging in beer and sprits, compared to those who don’t imbibe.

Cutting down on consumption of red meat has been shown to reduce a number of types of cancer, while vegetarians who have followed the diet (‘lifestyle’?) for 17 years can add 3.6 years to their life, according to the Mayo Clinic in Arizona. A diet high in fibre, mostly from beans and pulses, has been linked to a host of health benefits, even if you might lose some friends in the process.

However, it has also been shown that reducing one’s overall calorific intake is perhaps the most effective diet-based way to increase longevity, with one long-term study showing that a group that ate 30% fewer calories than a control group lived three years longer (albeit with the downside of feeling continuously hungry for 30 years).

Your genes may also be a powerful factor in your longevity. If you come from a long-lived family (showing perhaps that in general they are less likely to have been struck down by a genetically-based disease), the chances are that you will live a long life yourself. I’m lucky in that both of my parents are still alive, into their mid-80s, while my mother Valerie is one of the record-breaking Tweed family of Coventry, which at one point clocked-up over 1000 years of birthdays between 12 living siblings (of 16 original brothers and sisters). Of course, unlike friends, you cannot chose your relatives and ancestors!

Talking of family, those who have close family around them - brothers, sisters, children/offspring - also get a boost in lifespan, partly through the avoidance of loneliness, which has been shown to have a detrimental impact on health. Men with a wife who is younger than them also tend to live longer than those married to a spouse of equal age, or to an older woman. Alas, for women the opposite is true, and a younger husband will actually decrease your lifespan.

Staying fit, especially through running, is crucial, and exercise has been described as the ‘magic remedy’ for a wide range of ailments. Indeed, those who run are less than half as likely to develop arthritis as walkers. Golfers have been shown to live up to five years longer than non-golfers, and those with the lowest handicap gain the most benefit.

Another strong effect on our longevity is our work life. Working hard (but not too hard) can extend our lives - especially if that work involves keeping physically active. A study published in the British Medical Journal showed that delaying retirement by one year led to an 11% lower risk of an early death. Indeed, retirement has been called ‘a health and financial disaster for most people.’ Retirement itself is among the most stressful of all of life’s stressful events. The answer?

Either don’t retire, or decrease the time spent at work gradually. When ‘knowledge leakage’ (aka death) is a real problem facing the cement industry, due to an ageing workforce and recruitment/reliability problems with younger workers, having a part-time ‘old-timer’ around who knows how things really work would be a real bonus for most cement plants.

However, the question that we should all ask ourselves is this: Even if we could all live to 100 years old, would we want to? After all, the additional years that we might gain through living a healthy (and possibly spartan) life are not going to be additional years in our 20s or 30s: they’re going to be additional years in our 80s and 90s. As has been said, ‘No pleasure is worth giving up for the sake of two more years in a geriatric nursing home in [down-at-heel British seaside resort] Weston-super-Mare.’

1 The Century Club: How to live to be 100-plus; Jessica Salter, Sunday Telegraph, 1 October 2017